Listening to Prestige 321: Red Garland

This was the first occasion of Prestige venturing out of the friendly confines of Rudy Van Gelder's studio to record a live album, and it proved to be an adventure worth daring. The sound is fine, and Red Garland and his club band -- Paul Chambers and Art Taylor had their own things going on -- put on a fine evening of entertainment.

Garland, Jimmy Rowser and "Specs" Wright gave Prestige enough material for three albums of Garland at his best, which were not exactly hurried into distribution or given enough fanfare, but are as good as it gets when it comes to piano jazz from this master, but even better yet would have been to have been at the Prelude that night and to have experienced the real thing.

And I could have been. 1959 was a year of living in New York, and discovering jazz in clubs, discovering that these were real people, on a bandstand so close you could almost reach out and touch them, listening to the music, and the music was jazz, it was improvised music, being created right in front of you. You held your breath at that moment when the soloist finished playing the head, the melody to "The Way You Look Tonight" or "There's a Small Hotel" or "Satin Doll" and started off into the unknown, with notes suggested by the original tune -- based on the chord changes, they said, but recognizing the chord changes was too sophisiticated for me, and it still is too sophisticated for me. The places they went were melodic and anti-melodic, insistent and suggestive, playing for each other, playing for the audience, making little inside musical jokes that you weren't going to get but you didn't have to, it was enough to feel that it was happening, right then and there.

My first time was Small's Paradise, 135th Street and 7th Avenue, Donald Byrd and Pepper Adams. No minimum and no cover. You could sit at the bar, order a bottle of beer for 75 cents, and nurse it for a long time. Drinking age was 18, so I was legal. Bandstand was over my right shoulder. Some of America's greatest musicians were up on it, playing the music I'd dreamed of hearing.

Later that night I walked down 7th Avenue and went into Count Basie's. A house band was playing -- not the Count, obviously. They were good. I wish I knew now what their names were. I didn't stay long. A white country boy in Harlem can only handle so much sensory input in one night.

I did hear the Count Basie band, though, at Birdland, Broadway and 52nd St. This was the summer that Miles Davis was beaten by the cops just outside Birdland when he was on break from playing a set. If I remember right it had happened just a couple of weeks earlier, and the jazz community was scandalized and outraged. Was I part of the jazz community. Well, not hardly. But I was scandalized and outraged.

And, that night, I was hearing one of the world's legendary bands, in one of its legendary clubs. I remember white tablecloths. Whether or not that's an imagined memory I don't know, but the place seemed opulent to me, a palace of jazz. And the full-bodied music of the Basie band.

I seemed always to have been alone in my jazz forays that year, except for the Half Note, way downtown on Hudson Street, with my best friend Lenny (now Leonardo) Rosen. Al Cohn and Zoot Sims led a quintet, and we were particularly excited to discover that Mose Allison, the composer-singer-songwriter we loved from Back Country Suite and Local Color, was Al and Zoot's piano player.. The paths that cross in jazz have always been a part of the music's fascination, and the scene't fascination, and here it was happening as Lenny and I sat at a table and let the music thrill us.

Sometime in the 1990s, I was in the city, downtown around NYU, and I ran into an old friend who was getting his PhD, just coming from a seminar. We decided to go get a beer, and he said he knew of a place on Cooper Square. It was a thrash punk club, but it was way too early for the music, and it would be quiet.

The decor was thrashy and punky, with black painted cobwebs everywhere, but the layout was as familiar as if forty years had not passed. "I've been here before," I said. "The last time I was here, Ornette Coleman was on that bandstand."

The Five Spot was the last of my 1959 jazz clubs, and certainly not the least. I was under Ornette's spell, and I went back again and again to hear the music the New Yorker described as "the buzzing of angry bees."

But I didn't know about the Prelude, and I have to conjure up that evening from the music as captured and converted to vinyl by Prestige.

Well, the music is the thing, and this is Garland at his best, playing mostly standards with some originals--one of them. "Prelude Blues," probably composed on the spot. He starts out with a nod to Basie, the theme from M Squad, and salutes Basie again with "Li'l Darlin,'" Let Me See" and "One O'Clock Jump." A late (1971) release from the Prelude  tapes also includes a studio cut from the previous August, a Garland composition called "Little Bit of Basie."  Garland tips a hat to Duke Ellington, too, with "Satin Doll," "Just Squeeze Me" and Ellingtonian Juan Tizol's "Perdido."

Rowser and Wright know how to work with Garland, and know how to solo when called to step up. Wish I'd been there.

Red Garland Live!, on New Jazz, was the first release from this session, and that not until 1965. Edmond Edwards produced the recording, and he chose Irving Berlin's "Marie," Garland's "Bohemian Blues," "One O'Clock Jump," Gershwin's "A Foggy Day" and "Mr..Wonderful."

A budget release on Status was called Li'l Darlin' and had the title cut, "We Kiss in a Shadow" and "Blues in the Closet." It's hard to find release dates for Status product.

Red Garland at the Prelude was released on Prestige in 1971, with  "Satin Doll," "Perdido," "There Will Never Be Another You," "Bye Bye Blackbird,"  "Let Me See," "Prelude Blues," "Just Squeeze Me" and "One O'Clock Jump.""_Perdido" and "Just Squeeze Me" were also released on 45, with a catalog number low enough to suggest a release well before 1971, though that seems odd. Also in 1971 and also on the Prestige label, Satin Doll, with the alternate take of the title cut, the aforementioned Basie tribute, "The Man I Love," "It's a Blue World" and "M-Squad Theme." Orrin Keepnews produced this one.

Order Listening to Prestige Vol 2

Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1954-1956 is here! You can order your signed copy or copies through the link above.

Tad Richards will strike a nerve with all of us who were privileged to have
lived thru the beginnings of bebop, and with those who have since
fallen under the spell of this American phenomenon…a one-of-a-kind
reference book, that will surely take its place in the history of this
music.

                                                                                                                        
--Dave Grusin

An important reference book of all the Prestige recordings during the time
period. Furthermore, Each song chosen is a brilliant representation of
the artist which leaves the listener free to explore further. The
stories behind the making of each track are incredibly informative and
give a glimpse deeper into the artists at work.

                                                                                                                --Murali Coryell